


Trial And Error

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: a certain ability to recognise objects under our noses [6]
Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Bad Parenting, Bisexual Female Character, F/F, F/M, vania is a lot like young jon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:50:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3152903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vania looks for love in a number of different places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trial And Error

            If Vania hadn’t been raised to take responsibility for her own actions, she would have blamed it all on that fellow trainee of hers, on Callum, who was so wonderfully enthralling and so regrettably sensible. Being jilted for practical, pragmatic reasons was an unpleasant shock when she was all prepared to flout stupid societal rules about class and chastity and just enjoy the feeling of being in love. Vania had never even thought that he might not think the same way, that he might care about whether or not they broke the rules- and those rules were _wrong_ , anyway.

 

            Looking back with as much honesty as she could muster, none of what happened afterwards was really Callum’s fault. She’d recovered from him as quickly as any rational young woman with an all-absorbing job was likely to. He’d had a point, after all; they were both Riders now and liable to be posted to opposite ends of the country at a moment’s notice, there was a huge difference in social status between them, and they were too close to a serious emotional attachment to just... have fun. All good points. Very, very good points. Such good points that, feeling a lingering resentment and dismay, she found herself explaining them to Sir Fianola of Wellam.

 

            In retrospect, Vania was almost as inclined to blame Fianola for being such an alarmingly good listener as she was Callum for being irritatingly right. Fianola had sat there, patiently listening to the youngest Conté child explain why she’d been dumped, elegant elocution spoiled by her blunt language. She had even commiserated, and shared a similarly poor experience. And when they had both begun to feel as if the mulled wine was getting the better of their ability to hold a sensible conversation, Fianola had helped Vania get to bed. After that, Vania had sought her out, fascinated by the spectacle of the most ladylike, soft-spoken female warrior she knew dressing in full armour for practice matches, besting her sister at swordfighting, and politely insisting on being referred to as _Sir_ Fianola. Fianola was compassionate in a gentle kind of way, almost like Lady Keladry, but subtly different; dreamier, less obviously practical, better at smoothing people’s anxieties and angers over. Lady Keladry sometimes offended people just by existing: Fianola put on a dress, looked serene and unthreatening, and steered people softly where she wanted them to go. Vania, whose closest friends and family were largely extroverted, unsubtle and unmissable, was fascinated. It was like watching Uncle George or Uncle Myles persuading people to give up their secrets; in fact, reading between the lines of Fianola’s letters, Vania wondered if she ought to clue them in on the lady knight’s talents.

 

            Then hurroks attacked the campsite, she had to drop Fianola’s latest letter and defend herself, it got trodden in the mud, she was very annoyed, and some republican... _eccentric_ who had recently been seconded to their Group on account of being too awkward for the Army said something rude that made Vania itch to call him out. The knowing look she got from her Group leader was nearly as bad – but at least Elin gave Dermot a dressing-down, rather than giving her an interrogation as to why she was so cross that she’d lost her letter. She thanked the gods for that, and the way it crushed the sudden, gut-clenching wave of anxiety that people would butt into her friendship with Fianola and it would become a matter of public interest rather than something quiet and private and warm, like the little mage-made glass ornaments that came from Tyra, made to be held in your hands and warmed until they glowed beautiful soft colours. Vania had a strong weakness for those; at home she had an entire shelf full of them, including one in the shape of a Yamani lucky cat that Shinko had had made for her last Midwinter. They were too wonderful not to love, but too fragile to take campaigning, and it gave Vania a little pang of homesickness when she saw them elsewhere – on a ribbon around a child’s neck, nestled in a lady’s hair, decorating a travelling knight’s sparse rooms. Just before they returned to Corus that winter, she found them being sold on a stall in Port Caynn market for half their true value, and rather impulsively bought six for her friends and family.

 

             Fianola was very pleased with hers. When she tried it out on that last morning of Midwinter, in front of Vania, her face lit up and her almond-shaped brown eyes shone, and Vania couldn’t help smiling back.

 

             Vania had no real idea when it had changed; she hadn’t known consciously with Callum, either, when the easy warmth of friendship turned into something more nervous and tentative, a foot raised to reach a higher step, wobbling, off-balance. But at some time since the autumn she’d met Fianola, over a winter and spring of long letters chasing their recipients around Tortall, during the two blissful summer months of leave spent in blistering Corus, it turned into that something more. Fianola was only four or five years older than Vania, and they complemented each other; Vania amplifying Fianola’s quietness, Fianola toning down Vania’s brashness. They liked many of the same things, had more in common than many their age, and it became... habit. Riding out into the cool, quiet forest, losing themselves in the trees with a picnic and nowhere to be, walking down into the scorching city to watch the Players, swimming in the lake in the palace grounds. Suddenly, they had so much to talk about. They gravitated to each other at the few parties that took place so far into the summer, and casual touches became... less than casual touches, arms slung around shoulders became more than just camaraderie, a kiss on the top of the head became more than easy affection.

 

             And it was so easy, when you were lost in the forest or the empty, echoing corridors of the Palace in the summer, to forget how others might look on these things. To proceed without the inhibitions of society watching. So they proceeded, and Vania... hadn’t realised, how sweet it could be, how nice it was to be... cared for. To be – well, yes – to be loved. This was what Callum had refused to give her, and Vania at once revelled in the sheer bliss of requited love and the feeling that someone else had wanted her when he hadn’t, and wondered if it would have been sweeter still with him.

 

            Of course, Vania had overlooked the fatal flaw in the relationship. She’d fallen for someone cautious and sensible.

 

 _Again_.

 

            Fianola ended it when the dog days of summer faded and the white heat left Corus, the evening before she left for Wellam, because Uncle Sacherell was having a spot of bother with badly-behaved centaurs, and would quite like a couple of young, active knights staying at the fief to act as a deterrent. Quietly courageous Fianola was a coward in the end. Or perhaps she was simply more... practical. She knew, surely she knew, that if Vania thought she had time to win her back, she would try. And that was the last thing Fianola wanted.

 

_We can’t keep this up, Nia; it’s for the best, you know it is. Goddess save me – I love you as much as ever I did, but... all things have their time._

 

            All things have their time, indeed. Vania was glad indeed when her Group’s assignment took them to the opposite side of the country from Wellam, because that rejection stung, and, well, her heart wasn’t anywhere near broken, but it was painful all the same. Not the deep, scarring welt left by the crack of a whip, nor even the harsh smack of a riding crop, but perhaps the brief, sharp startlement of a slap across the face. Fianola’s handprint faded from Vania’s cheek only slowly: her heart was not rent in two, nothing so melodramatic, but it had been touched. Yes, certainly, it had been touched.

 

            Which probably explained why Vania found herself crying in Lady Knight Keladry’s arms, explaining the whole thing, accepting Yamani tea and patient, non-judgemental sympathy. And Vania, affectionate, impulsive, stupid Vania, who wanted to be someone’s everything, wanted to be the centre of someone’s attention, wanted to be the daytime sun and the stars at night for someone – and besides was a little drunk – kissed Lady Kel.

 

            It was not her smartest move, which was why it was such a very good thing that Kel patiently separated herself from Vania and put her to bed on the couch in the study. In hindsight, Vania could thank her for that. Back then, it simply depressed her, because it felt like just another rejection. What was so wrong with her, after all? She was attractive, always supposing her mirror didn’t lie, and the appreciative looks she got before men realised her identity were pretty powerful corroboration. She was interesting – her time in the Riders had given her a few stories to tell, and she told them well. She knew she could be charming.

 

            Vania wondered if all her luck was destined to backfire on her; if it was so, what a poor fate for a Conté princess. What a back-handed gift from the gods, to gain her independence by losing two brothers, to gain so much love and lose it so fast. Whatever next?

 

            Considering that she spent a remarkable amount of time hunting killers, Vania preferred not to answer that question. She turned away and pretended it had never been asked in the first place. Denial had always been a useful weapon for her, heavy artillery with covering fire from a slightly troubled and confused innocence when people tried to press her for answers. It had worked on her mother, when Thayet asked if the nightmares she had were about Liam’s  death. She was wrong; they were about Jasson’s disappearance, about the way he had been wiped from his own world in a matter of seconds, but Vania sighed and lied and said yes.  It had even worked on her father, who thought after all this years of ignorance and puzzlement that he’d finally understood his youngest daughter, and who thought that when he asked her about her particular friends among the other trainees she would give an honest answer – or at least a sufficiently guileless answer that he would know the real truth. Plausible deniability was Vania’s friend.

 

            Well, mostly. Even Vania couldn’t deny that it was denying the truth that had kept her in the whole mess with Faleron that followed Kel and Fianola’s rejections: feeling wretched, and relishing the desperate need she saw in his eyes, she denied the age difference between them and denied the impropriety of taking a close friend of her brother’s for a lover. Most of all she denied the fact that when he looked at her, he saw Kally, and that the need in his eyes was for Kally, not her.

 

            Oh, he was careful, careful both of her reputation and not to let her know that it was Kally he loved. Nor was there a great resemblance between them; Vania’s Conté looks were not as crystal-clear as Kally’s, but smudged and darkened like an aged portrait, and the little something in the way she moved, in the bright animation of her features, well, that didn’t make them so similar. Kally had had far more dignity, anyway, and always that edge of sad submission to her marriage abroad. Vania was the luckier sister, and she wore her misfortunes lightly. There was no real reason for Faleron to see her, and think of her sister, except that he did. Vania had barely known Kally, but from her family’s stories she understood enough of her character to know that Faleron was managing events at a pace to suit Kally, not Vania. The beautiful, correct princess, not the cheeky, rule-breaking soldier. It infuriated Vania.

 

            He was quite good in bed, though. Not as good as Fianola had been, but enough to make her fall apart under his hands, and she taught him what she liked. He took direction very well, but always with this edge of... shock. As if Vania shouldn’t know these things, which of course she shouldn’t, technically speaking, but he should know her by know, know that she had her fingers in a thousand forbidden pies. She’d never been devious, and politics interested her far less than practicalities did, but she had her own wells of knowledge, her own pools of interest. She was twenty-one. She _should_ know her own body. Only some blinkered acolyte of the so-called Gentle Mother would say otherwise.

 

            Unlike Fianola, unlike Callum, this relationship – if you could even call it that – fizzled out gently. It wasn’t as if they argued, but there was always that faint disconnect between them, between what he wanted and what she was. And she recognised eventually that she had found love for her sister, not love for herself, and that this was not healthy in any sense of the word.

 

            It was such a brief conversation when they ended it, brief, vague, and strangely dull. It did the job, and she walked away from him stable enough. She even had a spring in her step. Goddess bless your innocent heart: of course she had a spring in her step. She was _Princess Vania_. Her feet had wings and her bright smile was semi-permanent, and her luck was such that nothing touched her, the Contés’ careless golden girl, the Tortallans’ champion with her feet sunk in Tortallan soil and her hands drenched in their enemies’ blood. There were songs about her – not nearly as many as her parents, or Aunt Alanna, or Lady Kel, but one or two. You can let people down, but a myth has its own momentum. Myths may not cry, or falter. Myths may certainly not have multiple affairs, especially not while unmarried, and myths don’t get to cry about them. So Vania dried her eyes and dealt with it, and the sky did not fall in.

 

             She rarely saw Callum, although there was real friendship between them now; Fianola was polite, but avoided her carefully. Faleron rarely spoke to her, but treated her with courtesy when he did. Lady Kel never had cause to speak to her. So nothing came of it, in the end. Nothing lost and experience gained, that empty, unquantifiable quality she would happily have done without. Vania sighed over her dreams of being as vital to someone as her mother was to her father, or her sister to Alan, or her Aunt Alanna to Uncle George. Wishful thinking. Fire-lit tales. Nothing more. She should have aimed lower, but she was never very good at that, was she?

             She left a decent space of time, then introduced Fianola to Faleron, and enjoyed watching the faintest spark of mutual attraction grow and glow, like banked embers. Probably he would always remember Kally, but Fianola was fascinating enough; she was the forgettable one. It was deeply satisfying, to watch them together, watch them feeling their way into a bond neither of them would willingly break. She wondered whether she ought to give up the Riders and become a matchmaker, or whether they would take it well if she gave out a few useful tips on both sides. (He doesn’t like figs and has cold hands. She likes kisses behind her ears and she’s allergic to fruit with stones in.)

            She asked Callum what he thought, next time she saw him. They were watching the knights standing just a little too close to each other and talking from the shadow of a large beech where neither Fianola nor Faleron could see them, and he laughed softly at her. “Because you’re in such a good position to know those things. What have you been up to, all these years?”

            “This and that,” Vania said nonchalantly, letting it go, and craned her head back to look at him. Even in the dim light she could see a knowing glitter in his eyes, and she felt a little thrill in the pit of her stomach that at last someone was playing on her level, perhaps even – if she was _very_ lucky – by her rules. He was slightly taller than her, and broader-shouldered. He stood so close behind her she could feel the heat he gave off.

            “This and that,” Callum repeated.

            Vania nodded. “I learnt a lot,” she said.

            “Like what?”

            “Like that I was right first time round,” she grinned sideways at him, “but... I wasn’t necessarily wrong all the other times either. You don’t have to do everything at once.”

            His hand was warm on the small of her back, and “That’s my girl,” he said, so quietly that she barely heard him.

            She knew he said it. That was enough.


End file.
